A Queenly View
by ThyPenOrThySword
Summary: Queen Marie speaks to another about her son and his wife years after he has ascended the throne.


A/N: I sat down to write about Henry's betrothed, the princess of Spain, and ended up writing about his mother. As is usual with my recent one-shots, the story reads as dialogue. The queen mother speaks on her son years after her husband is dead and her reign is over.

Disclaimer: None of it belongs to me. The first line is a direct quote from the movie, and another line is paraphrased. I do not claim any rights to these.

Divorce is only something they do in England.

This might seem to you a strange way to begin our meeting. You have come to ask me about my son's love affair with his now bride and queen, and I start rambling on about divorce. You must think I am just another batty old dowager queen who has gone well around the bend.

Well, maybe I am. However, that is neither here nor there.

I like to think I was a good mother. I supported him, cherished him, and raised him as best I was able. Perhaps I left him to the nursemaid too often or did not kiss his knee when he scraped it in search of mischief, but I was a better mother than most. I tried to be a good mother; I did my best. How many other mothers in my circumstances can claim that much.

The parent I will leave up to debate is my departed husband and king. God rest his soul, harried as he was in life.

He was a wonderful king, if I may say so. Ours was a reign of prosperity. The obstacle to our happiness, however, was this very ability to lead a prosperous kingdom. He ascended the throne fighting and went down in the same way. He had a stubborn streak larger than all of France.

Do not mistake my words for something else. I loved my husband in my own way. Regardless, I do not claim that we were a happy couple. Ours was a marriage of duty. His duty was to France, and my duty was to him. My son once told me, many years ago before his marriage, that arranged marriages never made anyone in our family happy. I had never been so outraged in my life at so true a statement.

I know, I know. The crazy old queen is rambling again. Well, maybe you will spread the word and I will be left alone. Hah! As if I am that lucky.

My dear husband wanted to mold our son in his own image. He wanted him to be strong as an ox, with an even stronger sense of duty to his family and country.

I wanted my son to be a compassionate and merciful leader.

Yes, you could argue that these are the same thing. But, would you really argue with a dying queen? I thought not.

The pressure we both placed on him was what drove him to her. We had such high expectations of him. We expected him to strive from infancy to serve his country as best as possible. Instead, he read his philosophies and allowed himself to be carried off in fantasies. He shirked his responsibilities and neglected his studies. He refused to even sit in with his father on meetings to discuss the state of his future kingdom.

He was everything we had hoped he would not be.

Yet, she made him into everything he could be.

You see him as he is now. You see a man of power and respect him. You see the wealth of a thriving country and admire him. You see the dutiful and lovely wife at his side and envy him.

Well, you better envy him his queen. She made him everything he is today. As a queen who failed to guide her husband o his full potential, I can see the quiet strength she holds. She is better read than most men in this country and even the finest of his advisors. She is more knowledgeable of the people in her dominion than the men whose duty it is to grasp the peasant mind. She is steadier than the stones of her precious library.

If you ask my real opinion, she is the one running the kingdom.

And so, I finally reach my point. I thank God and every other deity every day for the fact that my boy found her when he did, even if he defied our wishes. Seeing what he is with her by his side, I dread all the more what he would have become without her.

Laugh all you like. Call me delusional. Praise the king in his masculine glory.

I know the truth.

I know I have failed him, and I know that she has lifted him to insurmountable heights. That is enough for me.

You may leave my chambers now.


End file.
